Competition
by SomeGuyOrOther
Summary: An Eva drabble with a couple improbable guest stars
1. Chapter 1

EVA-01 hit the massive concrete structure with crushing force. The purple giant sagged forward, dark reddish fluid spurting from the hole punched through its head.

Panic swirled through the control center, but Gendo remained, outwardly at least, as cool as the proverbial cucumber. _Any second now, _he thought. _Any second…_

"What the hell?" someone exclaimed.

Gendo glanced around. He had been watching the EVA, and not paying immediate attention to the Angel Sachiel. On the screen, the monster's thin black legs were highlighted in bright red, as if someone were shining a crimson spotlight on them. Even as he watched, the red light shifted to brightly illuminate the red-orange sphere cradled on its chest in a bony cage.

Sachiel's white, bony bird-skull of a "face" seemed to rotate outwards somehow, perhaps to allow its black holes of eyes to see what was happening.

The readings from the EVA suddenly went wild.

There was a blinding flash. The screens briefly blanked out.

The screens flickered and stabilized. A fiery cloud of smoke and ash rose high above where Sachiel had _been_. EVA-1 was now standing near the pillar, crouched and snarling, red teeth-like structures clearly visible, seemingly ready to spring like a predatory beast…but there was nothing to spring at. The EVA swung its head back and forth, seemingly seeking its enemy.

"Where is that Angel?" snapped Gendo.

"We...we can't pick up any signs of it! No energy signature at all!"

The Eva seemed to _shrug_ in a very human way. It sat down and slumped forward, apparently unconscious.

"Process images from all cameras, get some satellite images – let's get a clear look at what happened!" snapped Ritsuko. "And how is the Child doing?"

"Unconscious, but the readings appear to be within acceptable tolerances. He should be alright, the extraction team is being dispatched…"

A somewhat blurry, high-speed camera image snapped into view on one of the screens. The angel Sachiel, its torso illuminated redly, stood near the center of the image. Images jerkily shuffled forward: Sachiel, Sachiel almost washed out by a pillar of blinding light apparently spearing right _through_ its torso, a colossal ball of flame…

"Impossible" muttered Gendo. "Doctor Akagi, _what_ exactly just destroyed the Angel and just made toilet paper of our predictions?"

Ritsuko stared at some readouts as if she could somehow change them through sheer willpower. "It seems to be…no, it couldn't! A laser – but it would have to carry more energy than the entire electrical output of Japan…and it came from _above_..."

"Ah…S-Sempai…" stammered Maya. "There's something you need to see…"

"What?" snapped Ritsuko, striding over to Maya's console. Odd, jaunty music was coming from her instruments.

"A TV signal…enormously powerful…blanketing most frequencies…"

Ritsuko stared owlishly for a few seconds at a small screen for a few seconds, and then hit the controls. The main screens switched from their views of fiery rubble and the slumped EVA-1 to a grainy but fairly clear satellite feed showing EVA-1 getting its ass handed to it by Sachiel. Sachiel, after slamming its lance through the Eva's head, tossed EVA-1 off-screen. A red light appeared next to the Angel's legs, travelled up its torso. The image became jerky as the transmission slowed enough to show the ray from the skies punching through the Angel's defenses and Sachiel's core exploding with enough force to reduce the Angel to confetti. The video then looped back to an EVA piloted by Shinji taking two steps forward and falling on its face. All the time jaunty, humorous music played.

"Where the _hell_ is this coming from?" Gendo practically _snarled_ "and who else is seeing this?"

"Well, the Prime Minister, for one" remarked Fuyutsuki, who had a cell phone to his ear. "He wants to know what this "secret weapon" we used to destroy the Angel is, and why he wasn't told about it, and…"

Gendo cut him off with a wave of a gloved hand. "Stall him. As long as the government doesn't have any more idea of what the hell happened than we do, we can still control the…"

He stopped dead. As did the rest of the ongoing conversations in the control center. NERV's Greatest Bloopers was no longer playing. Instead, the screen now showed a bald, scar-faced man wearing what only the elderly Fuyutsuki recognized as a Nehru Jacket, seated in a throne-like chair. He was stroking a large white Persian cat.

"Good evening, gentlemen. I hope you enjoyed my little show. As you can see, I can take care of your little … _Angel Problem_. This one was a freeby – on the house, you might say!"

He spoke in English, which Gendo, Fuyutsuki and Ritsuko, among others, were fluent in. Along the bottom of the screen a translation into (somewhat rough) Japanese flowed.

"Now, I can take the rest of them out as easily as I did the first. But I think I should get a little compensation for this public service, no?"

Gendo muttered obscenities.

"So, I will save you all from extinction, for the low, _low_ price of –" here he placed a pinkie on the corner of his mouth. "**Ten. **_**Trillion**_**. Dollars**!"

"_How _many Yen?" Muttered one of the technicians.

"Now, some of you may think this excessive. But I don't think I'm being unreasonable. I mean, give me a freakin' bone here – that's no more than NERV and the Evangelion project charged you – for a giant robot that can't even stand up! Piloted, I might add, by a neurotic fourteen-year old!"

"How does he know that?" remarked one of the technicians.

"No idea" responded the eye-patched, metal claw-handed, 300-ib technician in the next seat over.

"So, in sum. Pay me. My giant (finger-quotes) 'Laser Cannon' will save your asses, I get control of the world's economy, and you can sleep soundly. Don't pay me, and enjoy nights of sweat and frequent restroom visits while waiting to see if - before the next Angel shows up - they can build a robot capable of surviving against one for more than a minute. Details on how to pay me to follow. Oh, by the way, I suspect NERV plans to kill all of you anyway. Bye bye now!"

The screen went dark.

The room was very, very quiet. Gendo closed his hanging mouth with a snap. Slowly he turned. Fuyutski noted to his alarm that Gendo's left eyelid had developed an Inspector Dreyfus-like twitch.

"Ideas, Fuyutski?" he gravelled.

"Unlike you, Gendo, I remember the sixties."

"What the hell does that have to do with anything?"

"I actually know of someone who might be able to help us…"

Misato stared at the snaggle-toothed fashion disaster.

"Do I make you horny? Randy? Do I make you horny baby, yeah, do I? [1]

She decided she needed to apologize to Kaji. He wasn't the world's most annoying man. Not by a _long_ shot.

[1] Or the closest Japanese equivalent.


	2. 2 More Competition

A colossal twisting, writhing pillar of angry red fire sprang from near the South Pole. Clawing, twisting, branching like an unimaginably huge bolt of lightning, it extended tens of thousands of miles into space before finally dispersing.

The helicopters had been dispatched immediately from the forward base camp. When they arrived, the water that mostly filled the mile-wide pit in the ice cap was still gently steaming.

Two men wearing Arctic gear stood at the edge of the pit, staring into the void as if seeking some answer in the swirling steam. One looked at the readout on a portable computer held in his gloved hands.

"Well, Dr. Katsuragi?" the older man snapped impatiently.

"The instruments aren't picking anything up. Either Adam has somehow been destroyed, moved a considerable distance – or he has been reverted to the egg stage."

"Which shouldn't be possible without the Spear."

"I am aware of that, Gendo, but it also shouldn't be possible to destroy him – not without taking out the Earth itself. Of course, I suppose he could just have woken up and headed off on a stroll himself…"

"Don't be facetious, Katsuragi. It seems that there is an unknown party involved, human or otherwise – and that they have somehow stolen a march on us."

Dr. Katsuragi carefully closed his computer and tucked it under his arm.

"Perhaps", he began hesitantly, "this is a good thing. If the Egg of Adam is in someone else's hands, we may still be able to retrieve it. I always felt that we were playing with forces we might not be able to control…"

"First", Gendo almost snarled, "I am deeply insulted, not just for myself but also for my wife and the rest of the research team1, that you would suggest we would risk the lives of billions on inadequate data…"

"I was suggesting no such-"

"_Secondly_, we are dealing with unknowns, not merely known unknowns but unknown unknowns. We have _no idea_ how this…cosmic theft, if theft is what it was, was accomplished, nor by who, or even if it is the work of a "who" as we understand it. We are clearly dealing with a power and genius beyond anything we know."

A pall of silence fell over the two men, who continued to stand peering hopelessly into the drifting mists.

Two white mice tiptoed behind them. Between them they carried a Ziplock freezer bag containing a strange, coiled, embryonic-appearing shape. They hurriedly exited, stage right.

"Narf!"

"Hm?"

"What?"

"Did you say 'Narf', Gendo?"

"No, I did not say 'Narf', Katsuragi. I thought you did."

"No."

Both men spun and looked around in wild surmise. Nothing but white emptiness scattered with chunks of half-melted ice too small for anyone to hide behind.

Dr. Katsuragi pulled out a cigarette and lit it with shaky hands. "Probably someone around the helicopters. Damn, it's cold."

"We will have more than frostbite to worry about once Keel Lorenz gets a full report. Heads will roll, possibly literally" Gendo sourly remarked. "We will have to make sure they are not ours. Of course, some of our co-workers may be more…expendable that ourselves."

They stood a bit longer in silence, Dr. Katsuragi morosely puffing at his cigarette. Gendo adjusted his protective goggles.

"Katsuragi…are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

"I think so, Gendo. But are you sure the Yanomamo tribe would take us in? I really don't know the first thing about jungle survival…"


End file.
